This eyewitness account was written by Dr. Hossam Fahmy. His outdated website can be found here: http://arith.stanford.edu/~hfahmy/webpages/index.html

Dr. Hossam Fahmy, when he was a graduate student at Stanford University

You asked me to write a few notes on what happened in Tahrir in the last two weeks. Here it goes:

I spent a total of 11 days in Tahrir. Specifically I was there in the last nine days and nights (interrupted only twice for a couple of hours each during the days of Sunday 6 February and Tuesday 8 February to get clothes and food).

Al-hamdulillah, I worked mostly on the entrance of "Kasr Al-Nile" the main entrance to the square near the bridge by the same name. By "worked" I mean guarding, receiving newcomers, giving moral support to those staying awake all night, defending, building shields, talking to foreign reporters, putting out fires from the molotov cocktails, calming down nervous colleagues, distributing food,  helping others make wudu, praying, contacting the army officers and building communication channels with them, putting blankets on the cold people, bringing medical supplies to the clinics, negotiating with the "invaders", planning to defend against attacks, sleeping on the street to be ready if anything is needed any time, chanting, .... the list goes on.

Every individual there did all that and many more. I was just a simple soldier in the battle field and ALLAH guided us to act in unison in many critical moments. To give you a glimpse of that I will cover a bit of what happened on Wednesday 2 February. Around 3:00PM on that day I was with some other colleagues near the center of the square and another colleague came to ask for help at the entrance since many of the "pro-Mubarak" were coming. The main job was to ask people to show their ID cards when they enter, open their bags for checking, and do a simple body search in fear of having any hidden weapons. The "gate" was a make-shift gate made up from police barricades and the metal fences surrounding a building site within the square. We put the gate between two army tanks that were standing to the side of the road. The comers would pass between the tanks and then arrive to our gate near the end of the tanks. We were standing between the tanks to receive them.

When many of the pro-Mubarak were trying to come in we started to say that those who say no to Mubarak are welcomed to enter, those who say yes to Mubarak are welcomed to hold their own demonstration outside the square in front of us, "We do not want any friction". The pro-Mubarak insisted on entering and started some verbal assaults and threatened that they will force their way in so we closed the gates with our bodies and stood in one row to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. I took turn with two of my colleagues to pray Asr while standing in this mess. One of my own professors at the university was just arriving then and asked me to let him in. I refused and he exclaimed

"Do you take me as one of them?"

"No, but if we open the gates to any one the flood will follow you. Please turn your back to me and stand with us to defend the place."

He (and many others that came later) obeyed that and we formed a human shield against those who were pushing us to get in. We were reminding ourselves to stay calm and chanting "Silmiyah" (Peaceful) but to be honest we were also boiling from inside because the pushing was so hard and some of the old people (including my professor) were on the verge of collapsing.

All of a sudden, rocks and stones started flying over our heads to hit our colleagues behind the gates.

We ran to enter from the gates and ducked behind them. Those who were pushing on us opened the way for the thugs behind them to continue the assault. Those of us who were standing inside the gates fled back to avoid the stones. Some of them started to collect the stones and throw back. I was with a few others ducking at the gate that became a "tennis net". Those who were at our back rows ran to the building site to get more of the metal construction barriers to fortify our gate. Some of us started shouting at both sides "silmiyah" (peaceful) and we tried to hold back our throwers.

The zeal overtook some of our throwers and they would not listen to us. In any case, the thugs were not holding back and in fact they increased their assault so we could not anymore hold our side from throwing back in defense. A few minutes passed and our back rows arrived with fortifications. We put more shields on the gate. The invaders saw that our position is getting strong and that our throwers are continuing despite the many wounds that they are having. They started shouting and asking for calm. Those at the gate waived to our throwers to calm down and stop.

At that moment the "invaders" ran and climbed over the tanks to talk to us. (The army soldiers were inside the tanks and closed on themselves for protection.) Basically, the thugs were standing in large numbers up high and we were below their feet level. Some of them started sweet talks about the unity of the Egyptians and how we should together work for the best of our country as one hand. Others, showed their reality through verbal assaults or signs with the middle finger targeted at us. We stood in rows hand in hand as a human shield to prevent them from jumping on us or gaining any more land.

The athan of maghrib was announced from a mosque near the square. Those on the tanks asked us to pray all together "we are all Egyptians". One of us shouted out loud "we are in a stituation of war we will pray maghrib and isha together later" all of us agreed immediately. Those on the tanks forgot about their call for prayer and continued the sweet talk. They played on the emotions and chanted "clear the way for them" asking us to go out and be "safe". Many of us understood that this is a plot to drag us outside the square. Suddenly stones were flying again over our heads. Our ranks trembled but our throwers returned the assault. The guys on the tanks were scared and stepped down from the tanks to hide behind their own throwers.

One of us ran in the open with a barrel to put it in front of the tanks and told others "take the tanks. These are Egyptian tanks and they belong to us." We started to move our barricades to have the "high lands, i.e. tanks" with us. The invaders increased their assault to prevent us from that and we had many wounded in this move. They also started throwing the molotov cocktails and fire was errupting around us in various directions. We made the move thanks to God and gained land.  We were not able to position ourselves on top the tanks and throw from above. The thugs had a much higher supply of munition.

Stones continued  for several minutes. Suddenly one of the army tanks started moving and turned in its place (we have no idea why exactly). That caused the left side of our gate to collapse but at the same time scared the invaders. We ran ahead again with our barricades and some of us ran behind the invaders. We felt that they are making a tactical escape to drag us behind them away from the square. Some of us asked our colleagues to stand by our new position and fortify the barricades at their current place (which was their place till the end of the revolution). This ended the main battle of the night on this front and "Kasr El-Nile" was the first front to be cleared.

The front at the mosque of Omar Makkram followed then the one leading to the square of Talaat Harb. The greatest and longest battle was on the road leading to the square of Abdel-Moneim Riyad to the side of the Egyptian museum. All the night the thugs were staging small attacks on all fronts while continuing the main assault on the front of Abdel-Moneim Riyad. There, thugs used stones, molotov, and guns.

I stayed at Kasr El-Nile till about 3:00AM when I moved to Abdel-Moneim Riyad. At Kasr El-Nile, we felt that we were like the soldiers asked by the prophet peace be upon him in the battle of Uhud to guard the mountain. If we leave our position before the appropriate time, the tide may move against us. By dawn all the fronts were secured and most of the forces moved to the side of Abdel-Moneim Riyad.

After Fajr, I was with French reporters at the Abdel-Moneim Riyad front describing the night and translating their discussion with the medical doctors who were supporting us. Those reporters had spent the night inside the square. During our discussion, a new assault started from the 6th October bridge flying over the Abdel-Moneim Riyad entrance. Thugs came again with Molotov and stones. The female French reporter was scared. Her two colleagues (a reporter and a photographer) charged forward to take photos of the Molotov descending on us from the bridge. Thanks God our barricade was far enough from the bridge that most fire fell before reaching us. We were shouting to each other to take cover and let them finish their fire. "When they finish the fire, we can respond back with stones".  In a few minutes the fire was reduced and the stones started. We started to respond back. In general, the reach of a stone is longer than that of a bottle of Molotov. Suddenly the French reporter asked me about a small white truck that came on the bridge

"What is that?"

"I think it is munition."

Yes, it was a truck loaded with stones and the thugs ran to it to get stones and throw us. Some of us went to the roof of  a nearby building and started throwing on the thugs from the building which was higher than the bridge; others were throwing from below. We managed to clear the bridge (for the second time that night, I am summarizing and cannot describe everything in one letter).

Those of us who were multi-lingual (I speak Arabic, French, and English) were handling reporters, showing them around the various fronts of the battle field, showing them the ID cards of captives indicating that most of them are police soldiers or carrying membership cards of the ruling party, translating to them the interviews they make with various people, ... We had people speaking Spanish and German as well but in any case, most reporters were able to work in English so things were manageable.

The reporters asked me who was leading us in those battles, how did we learn to stand in rows and to do tactical moves, how did we manage to capture some of them, how did some of us do "commandos" actions and clear the bridge (the first time) while there are gun shots, molotov bottles, and stones falling on their heads, how were the doctors working under such dire conditions, how can the wounded sustain the pain and still fight with their blood gushing from their heads, how can a man have stitches in the head without any anesthesia and go back to fight, .... I had no answers to these and so many other questions. The only answer that we, fighters on the ground, were feeling was "God".

I personally saw many signs of ALLAH during that night and the following days and nights. It was not just in fighting but in the manner people were dealing with each others.

On one night (I think it was the night of Saturday 5 February), I was at one of the make-shift clinics talking to a medical doctor. The "fancy" dinner that was brought to those in the clinic were boxes of a popular Egyptian meal named koshary which is a mixture of rice, lentiles, and pasta. The doctor to whom I was talking did not want to eat so he gave his box to a passerby who sat to eat on the street in front of a store. After a few minutes, another passerby asked the one eating

"where did you get it from?"

"Here, take the remaining half."

"No, No."

"Seriously, it is too much for me. Take it."

"Thank you."

The box that was meant for one person was split in front of my eyes on two other people. Three hearts (as well as mine) were quite happy with this sharing.

For most of my time in the square, I was drinking and eating through this "sharing". We ate little since there were very few restrooms in the square and the thousands sleeping there needed to share. The mosque had three queues at the entrance for its restrooms: "those who need to use the restroom to the right, those who need to urinate in the middle, those who are just going to make wudu and pray to the left". The rest rooms queue was obviously the longest with an average waiting time of over an hour.

As the days in the square rolled, we thought of building more restrooms. A colleague gathered donations (from our supporters outside the square) and bought pipes, tabs, urinals, ... the plumbers amongest us (as well as our supporters outside the square) worked to build those new temporary rest rooms.

The artists among the protesters were crucial to uplift our morale with their drawings, singings, theatrical actions, ....

The religious scholars (muslims and christians) were a unification sign and absolutely needed to calm the situation when tempers were sparking like fireworks.

On many nights we were hoping to live just till the morning. On many cases, we were living minute by minute and unable to predict anything beyond the current second.

The square had all types of Egyptians in it living together side by side on the street. I saw an old couple in their late fifties that appear from the way they are dressed to be from the higher echlon of the upperclass in Egypt moving among the people on that night that I described above. They were moving slowly, talking to the wounded, helping in whatever way they can. On the same night, I saw a simple woman nursing her baby. I saw an old woman standing by my side near the tanks with the stones flying. One army soldier was shouting at her to get out of the mess, but:

 "I am not less patriotic than those young men, my place is here to their side."

I asked her "Please, at least stand behind the tank so that we can go back and forth easily."

On Saturday 5 February early morning I was greeting new comers by "welcome to the land of liberation" and greeting those leaving by "return safely to us". A woman with niqab was going out with three young men and when I told them "return safely to us" she stood and looked at me. I thought that she did not hear me so I repeated. She stared even more so I asked

"Is there something ma'am, I am just wishing you a safe return?"

"Do not tell me to return safely. But rather tell them to stay here (pointing to the youg men). These are my children and they came to take me back to their father who is staying at home."

She then turned to one of her sons and told him to promise me that he will return

"Promise him in front of me now that you will convince your father to come back. Look at his hands and his wounds, are you less of a man. I want to be here with these blessed people. You are a coward and these are brave men." I stood speechless.

I saw many old people crying in the square with every small victory we manage to get. My old neighbor (over seventy years old) was calling me on the phone jubilating with every step and saying you are doing what my generation was not able to do.

I saw many signs of solidarity and love among people. Things beyond description but only felt on the ground. We had many highs and lows, we had many excitments and dissappointments but the last moment of happiness was great.

Al-hamdulillah.

Salam.